Rabble Starkey

  And once when Gunther just couldn't keep from scratching at his old eczema, Mr. Bigelow got him a giant box of Band-Aids, the kind with stars and hearts in different colors, and stuck them on Gunther's arms in the places Gunther chose, to remind him not to scratch.

  I always think on that nail polish celebration, and the Band-Aids, when I need to remember that the best way to get people to change their ways, or change their minds, is to treat them nice about it.

  It was the same thing Mr. Bigelow began to do with Sweet-Ho. First he came home from work one evening with some catalogues, and said he had just happened along past the college building where they had these out on a table, and he thought she might like to read through them sometime. One of the catalogues described all the evening courses, and sure enough, they were like he had said: courses teaching about poetry and plays and such. And there were other courses, too.

  We read about them out loud at dinner. "Here's one for you, Gunther," Mr. Bigelow said, and then read a whole paragraph about Biochemistry, which sounded like the most mystifying thing in the entire world. We all laughed and hooted.

  "My turn!" Veronica said, and took the book. She read about Accounting Procedures, and we all made faces.

  Sweet-Ho read about the course in the art department called Intermediate Ceramics, and we all busted out laughing when she got to the part in the description where it said, "pot-throwing."

  "We could do that right here at home," Mr. Bigelow said. "We could just open up the kitchen cupboard and throw pots all over the house."

  "Don't you dare," Sweet-Ho said sternly.

  When it was my turn, I found the one called Introduction to American Literature, and read about that. At the end of the paragraph it said, "Included in the semester's reading will be Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and—"

  Sweet-Ho interrupted me. "Does it really say that, Rabble? The Grapes of Wrath?"

  I leaned over and showed her, on the page.

  She looked up all amazed, when she realized I didn't make it up. "I already read that," she said. "I read it on my own, from the library. I believe it's the most wonderful book I ever read."

  She took the catalogue from me and peered at the page again. "But I can't think what they might teach you about it. Wouldn't reading it be enough? Look here, it says: characterization, theme, plot structure. I don't even know what that means. You think if they taught you about that stuff, then you could read a book again, and you could enjoy it even more? I don't see how that could be."

  She closed up the catalogue, shaking her head, all puzzled. Later in the evening, while we was all watching TV, I saw her reach over and pick it up again and turn to that page. She still had it in her lap when I went to kiss her good night, and that night she stayed downstairs till late.

  13

  A couple of nights later, Mr. Bigelow brought a book home. At first I thought it was from the library because it was a real hardcover book, not just a paperback like we buy all the time down at Highriver Cards and Books. And also it wasn't new. You could tell it had been read a whole lot already.

  "I had to go to Clarksburg on business today," he said, "and I saw a secondhand bookstore. So I went in to browse around, and I found this. I thought I might read you one of the stories in it. It's one I remember from when I was younger."

  "Does it have pictures?" Gunther asked, but his daddy said no.

  "Well, that's okay," Gunther said.

  Sweet-Ho peered over to see the cover. "Steinbeck?" she said. "That's the same one who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, right?"

  Mr. Bigelow nodded.

  "Well, I surely did like The Grapes of Wrath," Sweet-Ho said. "I expect I'd like any story Mr. Steinbeck wrote."

  That night after supper, Mr. Bigelow settled himself down in his big chair, with Gunther curled up like a pretzel in his lap and the rest of us close by. He turned through the pages until he found the story he remembered from when he was younger.

  "The Red Pony," he read. "That's the title."

  Gunther gave a sigh. "I love ponies," he said.

  Next Mr. Bigelow read, "'The Gift.'" He explained, "That's the name of the first part of the story."

  Gunther sighed again. "I love gifts, too," he said.

  Then Mr. Bigelow began the story. "'At daybreak Billy Buck emerged from the bunkhouse and stood for a moment on the porch looking up at the sky..."'

  Right away I could see it, clear as anything, in my mind. I could see Billy Buck, and then when he got to the boy, Jody, I could see him, too. Jody was littler than Veronica and me and needed a haircut. I could see Jody's daddy, all stern. And I could see them two dogs they had, with their foolish names—Doubletree Mutt and Smasher. Gunther surely did grin at those names. We all did.

  While Mr. Bigelow read, I could hardly take my eyes from him, and from the book in his hands. But when he paused for a moment and leaned over to take a sip from the cup of coffee on the table beside him, I looked around and could see that we was all—Gunther and Veronica and Sweet-Ho, as well as me—we was all waiting, barely breathing, for him to go on.

  I knew that each one of us could see it in our own minds. And probably we saw different things. A book with no pictures lets you make your own pictures in your mind. A guy who writes a book like that really trusts the people who read it to make the kind of pictures he wants them to. Of course he helps them along with the words. Like Mr. Steinbeck told us all about that old dog named Smasher having only one ear because the other got bit off by a coyote, and how his one good ear stood up higher than the ear on a regular collie. So we could all picture Smasher in our minds, just the way he was supposed to be, but at the same time each of us had our own private Smasher, built out of all the dogs we had ever known.

  Mr. Bigelow read on and on, sipping at his coffee now and then, and usually Sweet-Ho would have asked him if he wanted his coffee heated up. But she didn't say nothing. It would have been wrong to interrupt a story like that, which just flowed along like the creek in spring, pounding hard and full of grit against the rocky, dangerous places, flattening out all smooth and clear and fine here and there, but always moving moving moving.

  And oh lord, some parts of it was exciting, and some was sad, and some scary. Now and again I could scarcely breathe, waiting for what came next.

  Finally he stopped.

  "That's the end of the first section," he said.

  "Read more," Veronica begged. "Please."

  But he said, "Not tonight. It's late. I'll start the next part tomorrow night."

  "What's the next part called?" Gunther asked, peering into the book as if he could read.

  His daddy looked down at the page. "'The Great Mountains'," he told us.

  In the morning, me and Veronica talked about it on the way to school. "I almost burst out crying," Veronica said. "Remember that part when the pony—"

  "Shhh," I said. "I can't even talk about that part."

  She nodded. "Yeah. Do you think it will get sadder?"

  "I don't see as how it could. Anyways, the next part's called 'The Great Mountains', remember? That don't sound sad."

  She corrected me. "Doesn't. No, it doesn't sound sad. Maybe—" Veronica began, but she got interrupted by Diane Briggs, who came running up to us as we got near to school.

  "Rabble! Veronica!" Diane said, all excited. "Guess what! I'm going to have a boy-girl party! Next Saturday, for my birthday!"

  Some other girls in our class came up, too, and we all started talking about the party. Nobody had ever had a boy-girl party up till now. Most birthday parties was just a bunch of girls going to the movies together, with McDonald's afterward, and the birthday person's mother paid for everything.

  "Each of you has to invite a boy," Diane said. "It's at my house, and we'll have pizza, and I can rent any movie I want for the VCR. Not X-rated, of course. I think I'm going to get The Karate Kid."

  They all started talking and laughing about who they might inv
ite. Not me, though. I didn't like the idea much. What if you asked some boy and he said no? Just thinking about it made me feel funny.

  In school I looked around the classroom at the different boys. I knew Veronica would ask Norman Cox, especially now that he was helping us at Millie Bellows's house. She already forgave him for the stone-throwing and all, since she figured out it was because he liked her and wanted to draw her attention. And I knew who each of them other girls would ask, because they each had someone they liked special.

  I just sat there all gloomy through silent reading, even though it was usually my favorite part of school. I kept looking up from my book, thinking how it would be to ask a boy, what he might say, how he might act. After a while I noticed that my thoughts kept coming back to old Parker Condon, and I knew it would have to be him I asked.

  Parker Condon was practically the only boy in sixth grade who never acted rude. Once or twice him and me was on a project together, and he was always helpful and stuff, and sometimes I borrowed his marking pens when we did maps. Veronica said Parker liked me, and I guess I knew it was true.

  He wasn't good-looking. He was too skinny and his hair stuck up funny in the back, like maybe he slept on it wrong. And he was nervous and shy.

  Me, all of a sudden I felt nervous and shy myself at the idea of asking Parker Condon to a party. I could feel my face going hot and pink, just thinking about it.

  I began to plan how I could say, all casual-like, "You probably don't want to go to Diane's party with me, do you?" Then if he said no, I could pretend like I already knew he didn't want to. I could just laugh and shrug my shoulders and all like that, like the whole idea was stupid anyways.

  Then I thought maybe I could call him on the telephone so's he couldn't see my face when I asked.

  At morning recess, I made Veronica come over in a corner so we could talk private, and I told her I was going to ask Parker Condon but I didn't know how.

  "Look," she said, and she pulled a piece of notebook paper out of the pocket of her jeans. "I wrote this during math."

  I unfolded it and read the note she had written to Norman Cox. It was real short. It just said, "Diane's having a boy-girl party Saturday for her birthday. Do you want to go?"

  I asked her could I copy it, and she said sure. After I did, I put my own note in my own pocket and carried it around with me all day.

  "I gave Norman my note during lunch," Veronica told me right after school when we was walking home. "But he didn't answer it yet. Did you give yours to Parker?"

  I shook my head. It was still all folded in my pocket.

  "Well, there he is." Veronica pointed. There was Parker Condon, across the street, walking home. His hair was all sticking up spiky and stupid, and his sweatshirt was too big. I started thinking maybe I should ask someone else. Or maybe I shouldn't ask no one. Maybe I should just stay home on Saturday.

  Veronica poked me. "Give it to him," she said.

  "You stay with me," I told her. "Promise?"

  Veronica promised, and we crossed the street to where Parker was.

  "Hi," he said, all nervous, when he saw us.

  "Hi, Parker," Veronica said. "Rabble has something for you."

  Well, then there was nothing I could do but dig into my pocket and pull out the note. I poked it at him. "It's a note," I said. "You don't need to read it till you get home."

  He didn't say nothing. He put it into his pocket and looked at the ground. "I gotta go," he said after a minute.

  Veronica and I turned and ran. We started laughing as we ran toward home. Running and laughing, I remembered how, in the story, the boy Jody sat in the saddle put over a sawhorse, and pretended like he was riding on a real horse. How, in his mind, he could see the fields go flying by, and hear the beat of the galloping hoofs.

  Each night Mr. Bigelow read a part of The Red Pony. There was four parts altogether, and the third was the best. Each night we all sat there silent while he read, even Gunther, though he probably couldn't understand lots of the words. Each night I went to bed without saying much, just thinking on the story, just remembering each thing that happened in it. Each night Sweet-Ho sat up late, and once when I peered over the banister I could see her there in the chair, turning the book over and over in her hands.

  When he was finished, on the fourth night, and closed the book, Gunther said what I felt.

  "Read it again, Daddy," Gunther said.

  Mr. Bigelow smiled and kissed him on the back of his neck, between where his sleeper suit ended and his shaggy hair began, right there where it was pink and smooth.

  "Someday I will," his daddy said. Gunther sighed.

  Me and Veronica was planning what we would wear to Diane's party on Saturday. Parker Condon had said yes. Well, he didn't really say yes, but he sent back my note during math, and on the bottom he had put "OK" in big letters with a square drawn around them, all of it in ballpoint pen. You could see where he had first wrote it in pencil and then drawn over it in pen real careful.

  Stupid old Norman Cox had said yes, too, but not tasteful in a note like Parker. He had just said it right out, at Millie Bellows's house while he was painting the dirty old woodwork in the kitchen, and me and Veronica was cleaning out the cupboards.

  "Do I have to bring a present?" he asked.

  "Well, of course," Veronica told him. "It's her birthday."

  "I don't know what to get a girl," Norman grumbled.

  "Diane likes to draw," Veronica reminded him. "You could get her a set of markers or something."

  "Yeah, I guess. Or paints maybe. You want to go in on it with me so we could get something more expensive?"

  I almost held my breath. I stood there with a stack of plates in my hand, waiting to hear what Veronica would say. Me and her had already planned to go in together on a big bottle of cologne that we saw down at the drugstore.

  "That's a good idea, Norman," Veronica said, "but Rabble and I are already planning to do that."

  "Yeah, okay," Norman said, and dipped his brush back in the can of white paint.

  I felt so relieved that I was able to be nice to Norman all of a sudden. "They have real nice art supplies down at the hardware store," I told him. "Books on how to draw and everything, too, back in the corner behind the kitchen stuff."

  In Veronica's room, every night, after we went upstairs, we tried on her dresses. She had dressier ones than me, and she said I could borrow any one I chose. She was taller but she had some that fit me, some she had outgrown, still hanging there. On Thursday night, Mr. Bigelow knocked and poked his head in the door when he heard us giggling in there. When he looked in, I was wearing a yellow dress that was kind of babyish because it was two years old. But it fit good. Veronica was holding up two others on hangers, trying to decide between them.

  Mr. Bigelow said some admiring stuff about how I looked in the yellow dress, not pointing out that it was babyish. Maybe he didn't notice.

  Then he said, "Actually, I was kind of hoping that all of your clothes would be too small, Veronica. Yours too, Rabble. I was kind of hoping that I could take the two of you shopping tomorrow evening for new party dresses at the mall."

  "We both have grown a lot, Daddy," Veronica said, grinning.

  "I can see that. How about it? Is it a date, tomorrow night after supper?"

  "Sure," Veronica said.

  He looked at me. "Rabble?"

  "You really mean me, too?" I could hardly believe it.

  "I have an overwhelming urge to buy two new dresses for my two best girls," he said, "for their first boy-girl party."

  The next night, after supper, he took me and Veronica in the car to the mall. Sweet-Ho had cautioned me, though she didn't need to, about how I shouldn't take forever making up my mind the way I usually do. How I should be grateful for whatever Mr. Bigelow decided on, even if it might be something I didn't like much. How I should veer away from anything that might cost a whole lot.

  Shoot, I would've done that anyway, without her reminding me.
I would've worn Veronica's old babyish yellow dress with the puffy sleeves and all, without complaining.

  He took us right to a big old department store, where toward the back they had a whole section called "Hoyden." I didn't know what that meant and neither did the saleslady; I asked her, and she just shrugged, so I made up my mind to look it up when I got back home. Mr. Bigelow didn't know neither, but he said somebody in his office had told him it was the place to come.

  Then he sat down in a chair in the "Hoyden" department, not even minding that he was the only man in sight, and he told me and Veronica we could pick what we wanted and try it on.

  Oh lord, it was something. We skipped right past the jeans and all, and went to where there was racks and racks of dresses, and each one was better than the one before.

  "Look," I whispered to Veronica, and held out the skirt of a red dress with little white flowers all over.

  She nodded. "Why don't you try it on?" she said back.

  But the saleslady came over. She was gray-haired, like maybe she was somebody's grandmother, and she had a nice smile. "You know," she said to me, "when you came in, I noticed your beautiful hair and those green eyes. I think you might want to look at the greens, to match those eyes."

  Shoot, I hadn't even gotten to the greens yet, I was so caught up with that red. But when she said that, I moved over to where the greens was hanging farther down, figuring she was a clothes expert and all and might be right. And there was the same dress, the same little white flowers all over it and the same big white collar. But this one was green, and it looked like a meadow in spring, the meadow that I remembered right behind my Gnomie's house, just as those earliest white flowers blossomed.

  "I think this would be your size," the lady said, and lifted one out from the rack. "Let's hold it up." She held the dress against me, in front of a mirror, and I could see she was right about the green. My eyes peered back at me above that dress, and even though my jeans and sneakers was sticking out at the bottom, it didn't matter. I could see that the green dress was the perfect one.